1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer game which is played on the Internet and which allows multiple users (up to 1,000) to play the game at the same time. Specifically, the game falls into the genre known as MUD ("Multi-User Dungeon"), MUSH ("Multi-User Shared Hallucination") or MUSE ("Multi-User Shed Environment"), and is enhanced by various features including the use of three-dimensional sound.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Multi-user text based computer adventure games have their origins in interactive literature and both live and tabletop roleplaying games. During the course of their development to date, they have also absorbed certain features from text-based computer adventure games, graphic adventure games and computer roleplaying games, all of which are single-player games.
Interactive Fiction and Gamebooks
"In the 1960s experimental writers like Raymond Queneau and B. S. Johnson produced texts with multiple possible plots arranged in separate sections to be shuffled or selected by the reader. Michael Moorcock did much the same thing on a larger scale with the Jerry Cornelius quartet, designed to be read in any order.
The idea of turning this into a game rather than an artistic statement about the randomness of the universe came with State of Emergency, a `Programmed Entertainment` by Dennis Guereier and Joan Richards, published by Penguin in 1969. You-the-reader join cabinet meetings and top-level political discussions in `the newly independent Republic of Lakoto`, and have several (but not very many) chances to make important decisions about hydro-electric power schemes, representations to the UN, and whether quietly to assassinate a dangerous general."
from Solo Voyages by Graeme Davis and Colin Greenland, Imagine magazine No. 22, January 1985 PA1 from Multi-User Dungeons by Alan Cox and Malcolm Campbell, Interactive Fantasy 1.2, Winter 1994. PA1 Sector-only sounds: these are sounds attached to an object which can only be heard by players in the same sector. PA1 Loud sounds: these are sounds attached to an object which can be heard by players in the sector containing the object, and all adjacent sectors to that sector. PA1 Sector-based sounds: sounds which exist in a sector but are not attached to an object, although they may be played at a specific position within the sector. PA1 Environmental sounds: non-3D sounds used to produce ambiance within a sector or a group of sectors. These are sounds generally not associated with a specific position within a sector (i.e. the wind, crickets chirping at night). PA1 Looping sounds: sounds that play continuously. PA1 Intermittent sounds: these are sounds that continually repeat, with a delay between each repetition. The delay is random number generated from a specified range. This is used for repetitive sounds that occur occasionally, such as a bird chirping or a dog barking. PA1 Moving sounds: sounds that move on a predetermined path relative to the object's position on the server. A fly buzzing around your head is implemented this way. While the fly object on the server remains at position (x,y,z), the client is updating its sounds position in a circular path around that point so that it appears to the player that the fly is quickly moving around in a circle. PA1 Sound dampening: a sound's volume can be dampened to reflect obstructions between the player and the sound source. A sound on the other side of a cement wall for example, will sound much quieter than a sound at the same position with nothing obstructing the sound waves. PA1 Sound fading: sounds can be faded in and out When a player goes from one sector to another with different environmental sounds, the sound in the sector he is leaving is faded out and the sound in the sector which he is entering is faded in, giving the impression of a smooth transition from one sector to another, even though the player's position is changing instantaneously on the server. PA1 Smooth sound updating: when a sound's position relative to a player is changed, the client smoothes the transition so that change in position sounds as it would if the object were moving along a path, rather than jumping from point to point If, for example, the server tells the client to update a sound from point a to point b, the client will perform an interpolation between points a and b, updating the sound on several points along a line between a and b on a scale small enough so that the transition sounds smooth, as if the player were really moving to a new position. PA1 Frequency variation: the client has the ability to vary the frequency that sounds are played so that we may use the same sound file to produce similar but different sounds (for example, the sound of a dog barking may be speeded up for small dogs and slowed down for large dogs), and thus preserve disk space. PA1 Political intrigue, espionage and mysteries in the waking world of the City. Every player has connections to one or more of the secret societies operating in the shadows of the City, and each faction has its own schemes and plans. PA1 Action and adventure in the dreams of the City. The world of dreams is a fantastical place with many challenges to overcome. As players explore the dream world, their avatars can develop a wide range of psychic powers. The true nature of the Sleeping Realm is a mystery in itself; power and influence in the dream world can result in greater power in the waling world, as well. PA1 Embedded games are linked to status in the City, and give players an opportunity for direct competition in the waking world. PA1 In addition to the game elements, Crossroads will be a social environment providing ample opportunity to meet new people and chat about any subject that comes to mind. Given the present-day setting, players do not have to "break character" in order to talk about TV, sports, politics or any other subject. PA1 You've always been nosy. As a child, your curiosity managed to get you into all kinds of scrapes. (Snoop archetype) But no matter how much trouble you got into, you always managed to get out of it using your wit and charm. (Clever, Charming) When you were twelve, you thought that you met a ghost while you were poking around a condemned building. This sparked an interest in the supernatural which remained with you as you grew older. You continued to study the supernatural, and did some reporting for a ghost-spotter's tabloid called "Words from Beyond." (Fantasy interest) During this time, you were approached by a woman named Natalia. She had followed your stories, and told you of a secret brotherhood dedicated to the study of the unknown and the use of mystical knowledge to gain power in the real world. She invited you to become a part of this organization, and so it was that you became a member of the Codex. Faction: Codex) PA1 You've been working for the Codex for a few years now. The pay's good, but you've never been able to hold on to money. (Poor) Your work for the Codex has included a fair amount of research, but you've also spent time on the front lines. You spent years in Peru, investigating the ancient temples there. You scoured the Universities of New England, stealing the ancient tomes you couldn't acquire through legal channels. And now you've been sent to the City. Apparently there's some sort of psychodimensional rift here, a portal allowing the inhabitants of the City access to one another's dreams. There also seems to be an abundance of mystic items in the City: items that may have come straight out of dreams. The Codex wants more information, and you're the man to get it. Given the unusual political situation at the moment--type Help Codex for more information--this is an excellent opportunity for you to move up in the ranks. Report to Codex HQ as soon as possible to get the update on the current situation. PA1 As part of your cover, you have obtained a job as a waiter at the Bradbury Lounge, on Fifth street. In the first few days, you've noticed that there seems to be a private elevator going to a second level. A number of people seem to have the key, but you don't know what goes on up there. You also found a strange object under one of the tables--some sort of technical gizmo, but you have no idea what it does--which you pocketed for further study. (These are hooks to non-Codex plots) PA1 Well, you have dreams to explore, and the Codex undoubtedly has work for you. Good luck! PA1 Communication: There are many different types of mode of communication. Different factions have secret signals or languages which allow them to identify or communicate with other people in their faction. Equipment can give players additional communication options; a player with a cell phone can contact any other player with a phone . . . although eavesdroppers can listen in on half of the conversation. With advanced technology, players can gain other forms of communications that are more difficult to intercept Other characters can develop telepathic powers enabling them to communicate with other characters mind-to-mind. PA1 Espionage: Sneaky characters have a variety of options, from eavesdropping and shadowing to picking pockets and various forms of burglary. But perceptive characters may spot a thief in the act, and security systems can make life quite difficult for the would-be burglar. PA1 General Traits: Most traits operate in the background of the game. A character with the academic/science trait may be able to decipher alien technology or make use of scientific documents which are incomprehensible to other characters. A skilled gambler automatically reduces the AI level of computer opponents. In addition, non-player character will respond to certain traits. The dumb jock might have a grudge against academic characters . . . or perhaps it's the nutty professor who hates other academics, who "scorned his work". PA1 Equipment: There is a wide range of gear available to players. Equipment will allow players to perform actions they otherwise could not A telephone lets a player contact characters in other parts of the City. A map makes it easier for him to find his way about the city. Weapons--hard to come by in the waking world--allow him to injure or kill other characters. A deck of cards can allow a character to play a game wherever he is. Alien gear or other advanced technology may grant characters even greater powers--teleportation, telepathy, or invisibility, to name a few. PA1 Dream Powers: In dreams, characters will be able to develop far greater powers then they can possess in the waking world--supernatural abilities that might as well be called magic Increased combat abilities, the power to create weapons or other objects, extrasensory perception, teleportation, and many other powers will be available to dreamers. Eventually, dreamers may be able to reshape the very environment of the dream itself. PA1 Factions: These are the most secret and serious groups in the City. A player chooses a faction when he creates his character. The factions all have secret plans for the City, goals that conflict with those of the other factions. In addition, factions generally have structured hierarchies; the members of any given group will be engaged in a constant struggle for prestige and position. The player's faction usually gives him some sort of special abilities: skills, secret languages, or special equipment Sample factions include Directive 12, which seeks to control the City through manipulation of the political system, or the Olanza Imperium, aliens working to control Earth's economy. PA1 Secret Societies: Small-scale factions, these groups are less exclusive and their goals are usually on a smaller scale than those of the factions. These groups are somewhat like the modern-day Shriners; they have secret rituals and meetings, but they will accept new members, and people on the street may have heard of them . . . even if they don't know what the society does. A player may be a member of multiple secret societies. Many factions actively work to infiltrate secret societies, to use them for their own ends. Joining a secret society may give a player minor new abilities--recognition signs, access to equipment or information--but these benefits will be on a smaller scale then those from a faction. A sample secret society would be the Order of the Twilight Lodge, whose members are all active explorers of Sleeping Realms. PA1 Clubs: Clubs are exclusive organizations which are known to the public. Membership in a club usually requires some form of skill or talent, and the primary benefits of club membership are prestige, access to the club premises, and the company of like-minded individuals. A player can join any number of clubs, as long as she can meet the membership requirements. A sample dub would be the Aces Club, open only to those who have 100+ kills in Air Attack. PA1 Connections: Players may have other connections which don't fit these categories, usually with less structured organizations. Academic characters may have access to University grounds. Some characters might be part of a secret race--aliens, or natives of the dream world--in addition to their faction.
Edward Packard's Deadwood City, published in 1979, presents the reader with a choice at the end of each page, leading to a large number of possible outcomes.
Solo adventures for tabletop roleplaying games were published in the late 1970s and early 1980s for Tunnels & Trolls (Flying Buffalo) and The Fantasy Trip (Metagaming), and later for several other roleplaying games, including Dungeons & Dragons (TSR). 1982 saw the publication of the first gamebook to include simple game rules, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and by the mid-1980s there were many titles available, both in gamebooks and in interactive storybooks (the distinction being that the former involved some game rules and statistics, while the latter was based purely on the reader choosing options). Fighting Fantasy (Puffin) and Lone Wolf (Berkeley Books) were the most successful of the gamebooks, while Bantam's Choose Your Own Adventure series was the most prolific interactive storybook series.
Computer Text Adventures
The format of interactive stories and gamebooks is very easily transferred to a computer environment, and computer text adventures can offer the user a wider range of actions by parsing text commands ("turn left", "attack dragon with sword", "listen at door", etc.) instead of offering the limited menu of choices available in their print-based counterparts ("if you take the left-hand passage, turn to paragraph 166. If you take the right-hand passage, turn to paragraph 342.").
Adventure, written by Crowther and Woods in 1970, is generally held to be the first text-based computer adventure game (Multi-User Dungeons by Alan Cox and Malcolm Campbell, Interactive Fantasy 1.2, Winter 1994). For home computers, Infocom's Zork series from the 1980s is widely regarded as classic examples of the genre.
Like interactive stories and gamebooks, computer text adventures are a single-player experience. They offer only a limited number of choices, with a default "I don't understand" response to any user input that is outside the range of available choices. They do not offer a dynamic game world in the true sense, since a player who starts the game anew will find things unchanged by any previous play sessions.
Tabletop Roleplaying Games
The first tabletop roleplaying game ("RPG") was Dungeons & Dragons, published in 1973 by TSR Inc., and it was quickly followed by a number of imitators. This genre of games developed out of tabletop wargaming, but allow each player control of one character rather than a number of units of troops. In terms of game mechanics, each character is represented by an array of statistics representing strength, speed, fighting skill, and other important qualities.
The players' characters ("PCs") co-operate to overcome enemies and hazards, with "the rest of the world" controlled by a referee ("Dungeon Master", "Game Master"), who also has the final say on the interpretation and application of the game's rules. Dungeons & Dragons is based in a fantasy setting influenced by mythology, folklore and the fantasy fiction of authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock. A typical game session would involve the PCs exploring an underground complex ("dungeon", in the usage of roleplaying games), fighting monsters, evading traps and hazards, and achieving a goal such as ridding the place of monsters, rescuing a kidnapped princess or recovering a legendary treasure.
The players verbally inform the referee of the actions they intend their characters to take, and the referee determines success, failure and any other outcomes using dice, the game's rules and a written description of the scenario. Sometimes models are used to reflect tactical situations, but this not strictly necessary. Players are rewarded for successful play by being given the ability to improve their characters' game statistics. Because of the co-operative nature of play there is no winner as such, and the goal is to build an ever more powerful character. A player whose character is killed must create a new character in order to keep playing.
As tabletop roleplaying games developed over the next decade, various other settings were used, including science fiction, horror and historical settings. The genre broadened to include less combat-oriented games such as Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, where player characters have to solve a mystery by relying on investigative skills and successful interaction with non-player characters ("NPCs") controlled by the referee. Some games have more in common with interactive storytelling than with the tabletop wargames from which roleplaying games sprang.
In theory, there is no upper limit to the number of players in a tabletop roleplaying game, but in practice a game with more than ten players becomes difficult for a referee to manage, and the most common number of players is 4-8. Players must normally be present in the same location in order to participate in a game. The game world is dynamic--at least in better-managed games--and changes permanently in response to players' actions. Because players interact with the game through a human moderator who has the ability to interpret the game's rules and apply them to situations as they arise, a wide range of player actions is possible.
Live Roleplaying Games
Live roleplaying (also known as Interactive Literature) is best described as "a play without a script". Examples of Interactive Literature are the How to Host a Murder line of games, and the Mind's Eye Theater games published by White Wolf Game Studios. In an Interactive Literature game, each player receives a detailed information packet describing the scenario of the game and the background of the character the player will be portraying. The game itself is a tightly-woven story--a murder, a galactic peace conference, midnight at Denny's--where each character has certain goals, important information, and a connection to some of the other characters in the game. The game runs for a set period of time. Once it begins, the action is controlled almost entirely by the players. If the game is a murder mystery, the players may catch the murderer, accuse the wrong character, or all die horrible deaths, one by one If it's a galactic peace conference, the participants will have various demands and issues to be resolved--maybe they will come to a peaceful agreement, or maybe there will be war. It all depends on the actions of the players.
Live roleplaying games require the presence of all participants in the same location, and the participation of one or more human moderators. They offer a dynamic game world, but are not persistent, commonly lasting for a day or at most a long weekend.
Computer Roleplaying Games
The peak of popularity of tabletop roleplaying games in the mid-1980s coincided with the spread of home computers and the birth of the entertainment software industry in its present form, and many attempts were made to translate the experience of a tabletop roleplaying game to a home computer.
Computer roleplaying games are distinguished from other computer adventure games chiefly by the requirement for the player to create a character or a group of characters by choosing ability scores, equipment and other attributes, in imitation of the character generation process that takes place in a tabletop roleplaying game. Unlike tabletop roleplaying games, however, they remain a single-player experience, and their only concession to the idea of a dynamic game world is the option offered to the player to save a game at any point and return to it later. Like other kinds of computer adventure game, success is achieved more by finding the correct path through the pre-programmed obstacles and hazards, and reaching the end of the story.
Notable computer roleplaying games include SSI's series licensed from TSR's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tabletop roleplaying property (e.g. Pool of Radiance), Origin Systems' Ultima series, and more recently Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo.
Computer Graphic Adventure Games
Graphic adventures are very similar to text adventures, but offer a more user-friendly graphical interface. Player input is normally by pointing and clicking with the mouse, and player feedback is provided by playing animations (normally 2D sprites against 2D backgrounds in a third-person side view), accompanied by pre-recorded dialogue presented as screen text and audio. For example, clicking on a door might cause the main character to walk to the door, and perhaps offer some observations about it ("it's locked", "it looks very flimsy", etc.); in some games, a list of actions which may be taken in regard to the door might also be displayed in the command area of the screen.
Graphic adventures are a single-player experience, and victory is achieved by guiding the character through the correct sequence of actions to solve all the problems set by the game's designers, and reach the end of the story. The game world is neither persistent nor dynamic, except in so far as the player may save a game in progress and return to it later.
Lucasfilm Games and its successor company LucasArts have produced many graphic adventure games that are regarded as classic examples of the genre. These titles include Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Hit The Road and Full Throttle.
Multi-User Computer Role-Playing Games
"From quite early in the history of interactive multi-user computing, systems supported `conferences` where people could talk together. Each message scrolled up the display, tagged with the sender's name. While intended for serious long-distance discussions, they rapidly acquired recreational uses too . . .
. . While not the first such game, MUD1 which ran at Essex University was probably the greatest initial influence on the development of MUDs, including giving the genre its name . . .
. . The Essex MUD was played from numerous sites other than Essex as the ARPANET and the UK academic network took shape . . . Its impact on the rest of the world was, however, muted by the fact that it wasn't freely available as source code.
Late in 1987 I was a student at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, and along with a few other Essex MUD players got involved in a project that later became known as AberMUD. Two unplanned events occurred that ignited the explosion of MUDs on the internet. Firstly we ported the game to a Unix system, and secondly someone asked us for a copy. We released it with a license that allowed free non-commercial use."
Multi-user computer roleplaying games are known by a variety of acronyms, which normally indicate stylistic rather than technical differences. The majority of these games fall into two broad categories. Multi-User Dungeons, or MUDs, favor action and combat, with players fighting monsters and even other players in the effort to become ever more powerful. By contrast, a Multi-User Shared Hallucination (MUSH) or Multi-User Shared Environment (MUSE) places more emphasis on nonviolent interaction between players. Some become intensely political as players plot and compete for influence, while others are closer to group storytelling than to a competitive game.
Apart from the shared characteristics of supporting multiple players over a network or the internet, and allowing each player a single game persona or character, the games in this genre are various in the extreme. Some are entirely human-moderated, and others are computer-moderated to varying degrees. Some are entirely text-based, and some use graphics and sound to varying degrees. Some are commercial, and some are not
A list of MUDs and similar games may be found in the USENET newsgroup rec.games.mud.misc. Gemstone III, a text-based MUD, is one of the most popular games on America Online's Games Channel One of the most noteworthy recent commercial releases in this genre is 3DO's Meridian 59, which offers limited sound and some graphics. Forthcoming titles like Origin's Ultima Online are moving increasingly in the direction of more sophisticated graphics.
None of these games matches the capabilities of the present invention, where the game is an Internet audio multiuser roleplaying game, with interactive text enhanced by 3D audio capabilities whereby the player is fully immersed in a constantly changing and expanding virtual world.